Games by genre

Rocky Balboa - PSP

Release Date:

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Summary:

Rocky Balboa is the latest story in the saga of one of Hollywood's most beloved characters, Philadelphia boxer Rocky Balboa. Retired, and with his beloved Adrian passed away and his grown son too busy to spend time with him, Philadelphia's favorite boxer is a lonely man. When an ESPN sports show runs a simulated fight between Balboa and the current champ, Mason "The Line" Dixon, Balboa wins, prompting a resurgence of interest in his illustrious career. Presented with the opportunity to wage one last exhibition fight, Rocky accepts the challenge, despite the protests of his friends and family.

5.0

The game version of the famous movie Rocky Balboa reminds us of the big-hearted Rocky in the film. But it seems the game offers nothing more than frustration because of complex controls and a very bad fighting system. The Rocky Balboa game on PSP lets you play as the young Rocky in the early years of his fighting career, rather than the aging Rocky of the more recent films. There are a number of interesting materials in the game, but with an inadequately designed fighting system, you totally feel like you’re just wasting your time playing the game.

If you want to relive some unforgettable fighting scenes in the many Rocky Balboa films, then you can have that experience here. The historical fights mode of the game closely resembles the career mode where you get to fight 20 different fights patterned from the six Rocky movies. However, most of these fights seem disjointed, like they were culled out randomly from the bouts in the movie version. The lack of context is quite obvious since a short film clip generally introduces each fight, which should have been used to establish continuity and connection. Surprisingly, that hasn’t been the case. But the fights are absolutely reminiscent of the legend’s fights, and as reminiscing goes, this one regales the fans of the famous movie franchise with the presence of familiar famous faces like Apollo Creed Ivan Drago, and Clubber Lang, to name three. Along with the historical fights mode of the game, there is also an exhibition match and play where you get to be one of the two dozen characters in the game. It’s a bit awkward in that the characters are repetitive – it’s like dealing with different versions of the same character.

Sure, there are a lot of fights in this game but the very poorly done fighting system just annoys you. The unnecessary complexity of the controls is a major problem for one; the fact that they are also unresponsive aggravates the issue. The four PSP face buttons are quite functional when throwing some punches, jabs, and hooks but if you want to throw in some uppercuts or some other special punches, you need to move the analog stick in a certain direction and then hit with a combination of buttons. Sure sounds easy but believe me; I’ve tried all tricks to make the combo work in a single attempt, but guess what…it doesn’t act out the upper cut. Most of the time, It takes 3 to 4 punches you can connect and hit your opponent. I’m telling all my mates feel the same frustration but nobody can seem to do it the way it should be.

Well, as the famous films have been known to convey, there obviously is more to boxing than just simply punching but you don’t even have anything to compare – all the boxing fundamentals are lost here. For the most part you have to move the analog stick around to lower or raise your guard. There is no block button, can you believe that!? You’re supposed to just let the stick stay on neutral for the most basic block. That, too, has a problem because it usually ends up being unresponsive. Sometimes I wonder if I’m successfully blocking – or still playing, come to think of it. I have to reasons to suspect sometimes that the game has frozen!

The game looks pretty good, though. The characters are depicted in finely detailed kind of way, especially those famous characters from the films. The audio commentaries that accompany each fight are also a plus in this game; but there isn’t any voice acting from the characters, unfortunately. Rocky Balboa fans would no doubt be still charmed by the game; but if you’re the type of boxing fan that wants to experience some pure boxing action on a handheld console, I have to warn you…you’d be very disappointed with this game.